Two Sides to Experimentation

my dad's recipe for chicken & linguini

Hi there,

This past week, I made a dish for dinner that hadn't crossed my mind in years: my dad's chicken and pepper linguini. It was his creation for the pasta lovers that he and I both were (and remain to be), concocted sometime when I was in high school. It's what he recently referred to as his riff on chicken cacciatore, but with a Pakistani accent, after I texted my parents a photo of dinner, asking them to guess what I'd just made.

Thankfully it proved to be an easy recognition of this dish I’d once deemed a favorite of mine. Utilizing the technique of browning onions to create a delectable base for chicken associated with so many Pakistani dishes, this recipe incorporates flavors with more of an Italian flavor palette. Instead of dried spices like cayenne pepper, sweet paprika, and turmeric, or whole spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, and black peppercorns, the spice base for this chicken recipe is oregano, thyme, basil, and crushed red chili peppers. Diced frying peppers are added to the chicken, meant to soften in the pot's steam. And at the very end, store-bought sun-dried tomato pesto is dumped in for a final simmer session. This combo of perfectly succulent chicken, peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes with an onion and garlic base is what my taste buds longed for when I went for this dish earlier this week. I'm also realizing that this flavor combination, particularly swirled and twirled up with linguini, may well be one of the core memories responsible for this newsletter being called what it is.

This dish was a reason I finally started eating veggies by choice; I was a late convert to the Vegetable. It was the meal I requested for my 18th birthday slumber party, where my friends and I ate the chicken and pasta for dinner, celebrated with some cake, moved onto a music + dance party, and embarked on a late-late night movie marathon, ranging from Amélie to National Geographic VHS documentaries on Ancient Egypt...all interspersed with the consumption of my dad's coveted leftovers.

This week in 2024, not having linguini on hand, I used fresh bucatini (note to my mom: this constitutes a safe P/B word!). I got a chance to share this favorite teen-years comfort food with my husband, who I'm happy to say approved wholeheartedly, declaring that it channeled my dad’s cooking….one of the best compliments I could receive, as Gabe is his undisputed fan.

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In addition to his passion for recreating the dishes of his childhood in Lahore, from pulao to kofta kebabs, my dad has been inventing and improvising dishes on the fly—usually after a full day of work—for as long as I can remember. A molecular biologist by day, his long hours on the job are spent conducting experiments in his lab, paying attention to details that encompass precise measurements, exact freezer temperatures, and methodical processes meant as systematic responses to other experiments, previously undertaken.

My dad has always considered cooking to be his creative outlet, a balance to his professional trade. Once he's back home, evenings are a time for proportions to be eyeballed, dishes to be extemporized from whatever is in the fridge—items that are stored side by side at the same and irrelevant generic refrigerator temperature. Dinner prep is a time to use “andaza,” a concept that centers approximate calculations of seasoning and experienced guesses: ones that are perfected from non-scientific trial and error. Beakers, calipers, and thermometers exit his headspace until the next morning, as he moonlights as master chef.

What does carry over from the lab, however, is the rigorous clean-up that is self-enforced between prep and cooking steps, and particularly after dinner. My dad makes sure that the kitchen emerges in immaculate condition before everyone winds down for the night—as if oil never once splattered on the backsplash, as if no grains of spice ever left their containers...as if alchemy had not just been practiced and achieved. The pristine work station, then, is the control variable across his day and night activities.

The chicken and pasta dish is a result of this evening creativity, and was luckily one that was actually codified and written down for me to recreate on my own. There have been so many occasions while growing up, and even these days when I'm visiting, that my dad has summoned a new dish or variation on an old one seemingly out of a magician's hat, and there are so many that I can no longer even recall. These meals are at once off the cuff and devised with intention and balance, catered to the desires of the guests at hand (oftentimes me—and now my husband too).

I have recently tried to write down snippets of his new techniques, discoveries, or ingredient combos in my various note apps. One is his refreshed version of Aloo Bangan (potato + eggplant), which, by the way, autocorrected on my phone as “Tall Bangs.” I've kept this autocorrected title as is, a nonsensical ordering of two words that don't begin to evoke the sensory aspects of the recipe. (Incidentally, “tagine” autocorrects as “tagline.”) Another time, I jotted down ingredients of his tweaked marinade for a baked chicken. More recently, I thumb-typed up a few pointers on my phone for a newer, quicker method he's been trying for dal: boiling the water in a tea kettle and pouring it later onto seasoned, sautéed lentils instead of cooking them for longer in hot water.

While my dad's daytime experiments constitute the textbook definition of the word—scientific procedures testing a hypothesis or demonstrating a known fact—his experimentation in the evenings constitutes more of the colloquial definition: that of creative pursuit, putting aside known rules, and trying out new ways of marrying flavors and combining techniques, resulting in delicious results while having nothing to prove.

Now, without further ado, here is a special “recipe edition” of twirlable pasta....for Twirlable Pasta!

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Abba's Chicken and Pepper Linguini

Ingredients

long pasta (linguini, spaghetti, or bucatini)
~1.5 lbs chicken breasts, cut into small pieces
1 large onion, finely chopped
6 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
10-15oz sun-dried tomato pesto sauce, to taste
5 large Cubanelle/ Italian frying green peppers, cut into 1-inch squares
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp dried basil
3/4 tsp salt
black pepper to taste
1/4 tsp crushed pepper
olive oil for cooking

Directions

1. Heat 6 tablespoons of olive oil in a pot.

2. Sauté the onion until translucent or light brown. (This always takes longer than expected, a half hour or more, but note that the onions are browned for slightly less time than for other Pakistani-style dishes, which require a full-on browning).

3. Add the garlic and stir for a minute until fragrant.

4. Add the chicken, cooking at high heat until chicken is seared or white, 5-7 min.

5. Add the dried spices and salt & pepper and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

6. Add the cut peppers and cook until they are very soft (almost dissolved) on medium heat, stirring occasionally, about 20 min.

7. Turn heat down to medium-low to low, and add pesto sauce. Cook covered for 7-10 min, stirring occasionally.

8. Adjust seasoning to taste, and serve with linguini (or other long pasta) on the side, cooked al dente and tossed lightly with good olive oil. Serve with grated cheese, fresh black pepper, and a green salad.

9. Enjoy! Serves 3-4.

   (This is what I made for two, and we had leftovers for lunch.)

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Have a wonderful week, and until soon,

Insia